Special Feature on Asian American History II: Overachievers
Each issue we feature some of our readers to highlight the diversity and stories of Asian women, non-binary individuals, and other gender minorities around the world. Here are this issue’s Overachievers!
In many ways, Duyen Ha began cooking decades ago, during those many weekends spent with her mother preparing traditional Vietnamese dishes for family gatherings. After moving to the city, she felt homesick, and so she continued this tradition, bringing friends and strangers together through her cooking.
Duyen got her start in NYC at Marlow & Sons, shucking oysters. Eventually, she packed up her chef’s knives and crossed the pond to attend Ferrandi, a prestigious French culinary school. She graduated at the top of her class and began her career working at world-renowned restaurants in France. Within the past several years she has worked with award winning Michelin starred chefs
such as–Alain Passard at Arpège; Mauro Colagreco at Mirazur; and Gregory Marchand at Frenchie. At heart, she remains a Vietnamese American kid from Upstate New York.
After several years of working at distinguished restaurants, Duyen has ventured off on her own journey to start a wine company called, BONDLE. She is the Co-Founder and CEO and they specialize in importing French wines in a curated, seasonal collection and sells it directly to consumers in the United States in magnum format. The launch is geared to happen in Summer 2021 with a strong focus of the culinary community through pop-ups, collaborations and recipes for members.
Duyen’s cuisine and wine company marks the arrival of a new voice, a chef whose exceptional talent. Her culinary background draws from personal family histories and contemporary fine dining–creating a completely new vocabulary in gastronomy and wines that is all her own.
Tiffany is HK-born, Canadian-raised lawyer based in London, UK. She aspires to combine her passion for dance music with her legal career to become a leading music and entertainment lawyer.
Besides her day job, she is an advocate for racial justice. After conducting a bake sale fundraiser last year to raise funds for a Bail Fund in response to the BLM movement and protests, she began developing ikigai. ikigai is a social enterprise bakery that specializes in unique Asian-inspired baked goods. Limited edition items include miso banana bread and Levain-style white rabbit and chocolate chunk cookies.
In response to the unfortunate increase in Asian hate crimes since the beginning of the pandemic, ikigai became her passion project. She wanted to create something more long term and wanted to utilize the power of food to spread awareness and create dialogue on issues that people from Asian-ethnic backgrounds are facing today. Her vision is to utilize ikigai as a platform to highlight different charities that are doing great work in our community. She pledges to donate 50% of all profits from her sales and plans to partner with a different charity every quarter.
For more information and to check out the other items on her menu, please visit www.instagram.com/ikigai.thebakery